Events

Title.Touch the Sky With Glory:
The Nation’s Air Power – The Weapon Systems of the IAF, its contemporary technology and our capability to secure the NationSpeaker.: Air Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman PVSM AVSM VM VSM (Rted)

About the speaker. Mr Nakul Bhalla is a graduate in mechanical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology. He worked as a central planning engineer at Larsen and Toubro limited and then as a research assistant at IISc Bangalore. Starting a new chapter of his life, he joined the Dramanon Theatre Company as a creative partner and then later went on to start his own theatre company, The SparkPlug Theatre Company which is more than three and a half years old now.

Abstract. Many a times, long chain biological molecules have to pass through nano-sized pores. Entering a pore is a constraint, which results in a decrease of entropy or in other words, increase in free energy. Thus, the molecule has to cross a free energy barrier in space. Because of these biological examples, passage of long chain molecules have been studied in vitro too. Motivated by this we consider the process of passage of a long chain molecule over a free energy barrier. Interestingly, the simplest model for the process would be a chain of drunken walkers, climbing over a hill. One can find analytical solutions for simplest possible model for such systems, known as the Rouse model. Within this model, we find that calculating the activation energy for the process is (mathematically) equivalent to calculting the exponent in a quantum mechanical tunneling problem. Using this, it is easy to see that for a long enough molecule, the activation energy has to be independent of the length of the molecule. Further, a long enough molecule will cross the barrier with a steady velocity which is determined by the “steadily moving kink” like solutions of the associated non-linear equation. As a result, the time that it takes for the molecule to cross over the barrier is proportional to its length. The relevance of the results to biology will be quickly outlined.

If time permits, and if there is sufficient interest, my experiences in publishing the results too will be outlined, and it will be stressed how useful I found the arXiv.org to be.

Abstract. Coulomb’s law tells that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. I will convince you by showing my own experimental and simulation results on charged colloids that like-charges attract under certain conditions viz., in the presence of large number of counterions. Direct measurements of pair-potential between like charged colloids have shown existence of long-range attraction in addition to the usual screened Coulomb repulsion. Though counterions are known to mediate the attraction, the exact mechanism of attraction still needs to be modelled and understood.

The prime aim of this talk is to share with you all the excitement in establishing the “Like likes Like” through experiments using home built set-up and own simulation codes.

Abstract. The talk will trace the history of engines from inception to the present and bring out various challenges faced in the course of its development. The role of science and technology in sustaining mobility without further suffocation will be highlighted and future prospects discussed.

Abstract. The talk will introduce you through different molecular assemblies ( specifically the macromolecules) in living systems, their organisation and functions, giving emphasize on PROTEINS (polypeptides). To conclude, a small polypeptide is investigated to understand its structural preference.

Abstract. During World War II various countries attained varied level of technological expertise. The technological expertise or readiness covered various fields of science and technology. Some of the fields with lot of research activities, inventions, design and experiments were electronic warfare and navigational technology.

This talk will give an introduction to various electronic warfare techniques, related hardware inventions and uses. It will also provide an insight into the war doctrines of countries and resultant uses of electronic warfare of 1935-45. This talk will also introduce the basic details of the navigational technology used by guided bombers (for bombing and landing) and first missiles (V1 and V2) of World War 2 years.

Abstract. Dr. David Hu and his team recently showed that nearly all mammals take 21 s to empty their bladder irrespective of their body size. This discussion will reveal a conspiracy between isometry of the urinary system and hydrodynamics of urination to achieve this invariance.

Abstract. Droplets and sprays are ubiquitous in daily life and play very important roles in diverse fields of engineering. The first part of the talk, will give a brief introduction to the kind of work we are pursuing in this field.

The main portion of the talk will deal with droplet evaporation. Droplet evaporation is at the heart of all combustion systems, and also important in varied applications such as spray drying to form powders, spray painting, ink-jet printing, 3-D printing for additive manufacturing, etc. While several studies have been performed on single evaporating droplets in literature, the phenomenon has still not been completely explained. A fundamental study was performed to explore the reasons for deviations in the experimental and calculated (diffusion driven) evaporation rates of a pendant droplet in a 'quiescent' ambient. The results of the experiments, which show interesting insights into the common assumption of a quiescent environment in the presence of evaporation, will be presented.

The last few minutes of the talk will very briefly introduce some thoughts on the dehumidification and water extraction process which we plan to work on. Studies on this area could especially benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach from interested members of the audience.

Title.Touch the Sky With Glory:
The Nation’s Air Power – The Weapon Systems of the IAF, its contemporary technology and our capability to secure the NationSpeaker.: Air Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman PVSM AVSM VM VSM (Rted)

Abstract. Many a times, long chain biological molecules have to pass through nano-sized pores. Entering a pore is a constraint, which results in a decrease of entropy or in other words, increase in free energy. Thus, the molecule has to cross a free energy barrier in space. Because of these biological examples, passage of long chain molecules have been studied in vitro too. Motivated by this we consider the process of passage of a long chain molecule over a free energy barrier. Interestingly, the simplest model for the process would be a chain of drunken walkers, climbing over a hill. One can find analytical solutions for simplest possible model for such systems, known as the Rouse model. Within this model, we find that calculating the activation energy for the process is (mathematically) equivalent to calculting the exponent in a quantum mechanical tunneling problem. Using this, it is easy to see that for a long enough molecule, the activation energy has to be independent of the length of the molecule. Further, a long enough molecule will cross the barrier with a steady velocity which is determined by the “steadily moving kink” like solutions of the associated non-linear equation. As a result, the time that it takes for the molecule to cross over the barrier is proportional to its length. The relevance of the results to biology will be quickly outlined.

If time permits, and if there is sufficient interest, my experiences in publishing the results too will be outlined, and it will be stressed how useful I found the arXiv.org to be.

Talk by Dr. Albert Sunny from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Wireless and Social Networks: Some Challenges and Insights

Dr. Albert Sunny from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore is going to present his work on wireless and social networks on 1-March-2017 at 11 am.
Venue: Auditorium

Abstract

In sensor networks, the absence of infrastructure mandates the use of ad-hoc network architectures. In these architectures, nodes are required to route data to gateway nodes over a multi-hop network. In the first half of the talk, Dr. Sunny will present a unified framework that can be used to compare different deployment scenarios, and provide a means to design efficient large-scale energy harvesting multi-hop wireless sensor networks. In spite of the presence of voluminous reservoirs of information such as digital libraries and the Internet, asking around still remains a popular means of seeking information. In scenarios where the person is interested in communal, or location-specific information, such kind of retrieval may yield better results than a global search. Hence, wireless networks should be designed, analyzed and controlled by taking into account theevolution of the underlying social networks. This alliance between social network analysis and ad-hoc network architectures can greatly advance the design of network protocols, especially in environments with opportunistic communications. Therefore, in the second half of the talk, I will present a model that captures the temporal evolution of information in social networks with memory.

About the speaker

Dr. Albert Sunny completed his B.Tech. in Electrical and Electronics engineering from National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India and M.Sc.(Engg.) from Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He went on to complete his Ph.D. at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research interests are in modelling, analysisand control of wireless and social networks.

Abstract. Coulomb’s law tells that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. I will convince you by showing my own experimental and simulation results on charged colloids that like-charges attract under certain conditions viz., in the presence of large number of counterions. Direct measurements of pair-potential between like charged colloids have shown existence of long-range attraction in addition to the usual screened Coulomb repulsion. Though counterions are known to mediate the attraction, the exact mechanism of attraction still needs to be modelled and understood.

The prime aim of this talk is to share with you all the excitement in establishing the “Like likes Like” through experiments using home built set-up and own simulation codes.

Abstract. The talk will trace the history of engines from inception to the present and bring out various challenges faced in the course of its development. The role of science and technology in sustaining mobility without further suffocation will be highlighted and future prospects discussed.

Abstract. We all 'know' that among all closed geometric plane figures with a fixed perimeter, the circle has the maximum area. What about proving this? An interesting idea was by Jacob Steiner. But his proof had one issue. He could prove that it cannot be anything other than circle. But does circle has this property? That he could not prove.

We fill this gap using the infinite avatar of Pigeonhole principle. We use it to first prove the famous Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem from Analysis and its generalisations. It can then be used to fill the gap in the proof of Steiner.

About the speaker. Mr Nakul Bhalla is a graduate in mechanical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology. He worked as a central planning engineer at Larsen and Toubro limited and then as a research assistant at IISc Bangalore. Starting a new chapter of his life, he joined the Dramanon Theatre Company as a creative partner and then later went on to start his own theatre company, The SparkPlug Theatre Company which is more than three and a half years old now.

Abstract. A biological cell is a complex soft matter system in which the various physical and chemical processes span multiple spatial and temporal scales. The various theoretical and computational tools developed in the context of soft matter physics and statistical physics may be utilized to build highly quantitative models to understand these processes. In this talk, I will first present a brief overview of multiscale modelling techniques and show how information can be transferred from one scale to the other in a self-consistent manner. In the next part, I will present an atomic to thermodynamic model to study the problem of how proteins interact with the cell membrane and how does the collective interactions of these proteins lead to large scale changes in the morphology of the cell membrane.

Abstract. The talk will introduce you through different molecular assemblies ( specifically the macromolecules) in living systems, their organisation and functions, giving emphasize on PROTEINS (polypeptides). To conclude, a small polypeptide is investigated to understand its structural preference.

Computer simulations based on first principles calculations play a central role in helping us understand, predict, and engineer physical, chemical, and electronic properties of technologically relevant materials. This can solve many problems towards building faster, smaller and cheaper devices for processing and storing information as well as for saving energy. Many of these processes involve electron excitations and strong local magnetic fluctuation that the ‘standard model’ of electronic structure, Density Functional Theory (DFT), can’t capture properly. In this context, I will highlight two popular approaches that go beyond the standard DFT. First, I will discuss how Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) in combination with DFT has recently been successful for detailed modeling of the electronic structure of many complex materials with strong electron correlation. To give an example, I will show the iron-based superconductors on both bulk and monolayer phases and their anomalous properties, which have their origin in strong Hund's coupling and give rise to the rich physics of Hund's metals. Next, I will discuss my collaborative effort toward developing a high scalable, open-source GW software to compute electronic excited states more efficiently for petascale architectures using the Charm++ parallel framework. At the end, I will briefly discuss topological crystalline insulators, which are a new class of topological materials where electronic surface states are topologically protected along certain crystallographic directions by crystal symmetry. I will show that, without any external perturbation, both massless Dirac fermions protected by the crystal symmetry and massive Dirac fermions with crystal symmetry breaking can coexist on a single surface.

Abstract. During World War II various countries attained varied level of technological expertise. The technological expertise or readiness covered various fields of science and technology. Some of the fields with lot of research activities, inventions, design and experiments were electronic warfare and navigational technology.

This talk will give an introduction to various electronic warfare techniques, related hardware inventions and uses. It will also provide an insight into the war doctrines of countries and resultant uses of electronic warfare of 1935-45. This talk will also introduce the basic details of the navigational technology used by guided bombers (for bombing and landing) and first missiles (V1 and V2) of World War 2 years.

Abstract: Dr. K.P. Naveen will introduce infrastructure-based wireless network that comprises two types of nodes, namely, relays and sinks. The relay nodes are used to extend the network coverage by providing multi-hop paths to the sink nodes (that are connected to a wireline infrastructure). Restricting to the one-dimensional case, we aim to characterize the fraction of covered region for given densities of sink and relay nodes. We first compare and contrast our infrastructure-based model with the traditional setting, where a point is said to be covered if it simply lies within the range of some node. Then, drawing an analogy between the connected components of the network and the busy periods of an M/D/\infty queue, and using renewal theoretic arguments we obtain an explicit expression for the average vacancy (which is the complement of coverage). We also compute an upper bound for vacancy by introducing the notion of left-coverage (i.e., coverage by a node from the left). We prove a lower bound by coupling our model with an independent-disk model, where the sinks' coverage regions are independent and identically distributed. Through numerical work, we study the problem of minimizing network deployment cost subject to a constraint on the average vacancy. If time permits I will discuss about the generalization of the above model to a hop-count constrained model; I will also mention about our on-going work on the 2-dimensional setting.

Bio: Dr. K.P. Naveen received the B.E. degree in ECE from the Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU), Belgaum (2005), and Ph.D degree from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2013). Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral fellow with the INFINE team at INRIA Saclay, France. Since Jan. 2016 he is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, as a DST-INSPIRE faculty. His research interests include modeling and performance analysis of wireless networks, stochastic games and optimal control.

Abstract. Dr. David Hu and his team recently showed that nearly all mammals take 21 s to empty their bladder irrespective of their body size. This discussion will reveal a conspiracy between isometry of the urinary system and hydrodynamics of urination to achieve this invariance.

This talk will focus on distributed power control in a cellular network in the presence of strategic users using game theory. Strategic users in a wireless network cannot be assumed to follow the network algorithms blindly. A pricing mechanism is proposed and the optimal prices are obtained to make the users comply with the network objective. Some of the users, which we call malicious users, aim to hurt the performance of other users. Examples of such behavior is jamming where the jammer transmit with higher power in order to create interference to other users. A modified utility model is used to model this malicious behaviour of malicious users. The talk will consider a scenario, in which the network and regular users gather probabilistic information about the presence of jammers by observing the network over a long time period. The regular users modify their actions according to this Bayesian information. Bayesian pricing mechanisms which have power price signals from the network to the users are analyzed and the Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (BNE) points are obtained. The optimal prices are also obtained for the Bayesian case.

About the speaker

Anil Kumar obtained his B. Tech from the Government College of Engineering Kannur, Kerala in 2006. In 2010, he obtained his MS by Research, from the Department of Electrical Engineering, at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India under Prof. Srikrishna Bhashyam. During his MS, he did his thesis work for 6 months at Indian Instiute of Science, Bangalore with Prof. Rajesh Sundaresan. Between May 2010 and December 2011, he worked as a research scientist with the Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs) of Deutsche Telekom in Berlin which is associated with TU Berlin. He obtained his PhD in August 2015, from the Chair of Theoretical Information Technology at Technical University of Munich, Germany, under Prof. Holger Boche. His PhD thesis was titled ‘Resource Allocation and Pricing Mechanisms for Wireless Networks with Malicious Users‘. Now he is a postdoctoral researcher jointly at the Chair of Communication Networks at TU Dresden and 5G Labs Germany.

Abstract. Droplets and sprays are ubiquitous in daily life and play very important roles in diverse fields of engineering. The first part of the talk, will give a brief introduction to the kind of work we are pursuing in this field.

The main portion of the talk will deal with droplet evaporation. Droplet evaporation is at the heart of all combustion systems, and also important in varied applications such as spray drying to form powders, spray painting, ink-jet printing, 3-D printing for additive manufacturing, etc. While several studies have been performed on single evaporating droplets in literature, the phenomenon has still not been completely explained. A fundamental study was performed to explore the reasons for deviations in the experimental and calculated (diffusion driven) evaporation rates of a pendant droplet in a 'quiescent' ambient. The results of the experiments, which show interesting insights into the common assumption of a quiescent environment in the presence of evaporation, will be presented.

The last few minutes of the talk will very briefly introduce some thoughts on the dehumidification and water extraction process which we plan to work on. Studies on this area could especially benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach from interested members of the audience.

Ensuring physical and mental health is important not only for the students, but also for every one of us. One of the easily implementable measures to ensure good physical and mental health as well as high level of concentration is regular practice of yoga. It is, therefore, planned to start regular yoga classes for all@iitpkd.

31/07/2017---Meeting with Faculty Advisors
01/08/2017---Meeting with Faculty Advisors
02/08/2017---Interaction with Student Secretaries
03/08/2017---Introduction to the Innovation Center and Demonstration by Students
04/08/2017---Cultural Night*
05/08/2017---Free time
06/08/2017---Free time

R. David Koilpillai received the B.Tech degree from IIT
Madras, and the MS, PhD degrees (all in Electrical Engineering) from California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, USA.

Work Experience
In June 2002, David joined IIT Madras as a Professor of Electrical Engineering, and currently
holds the Qualcomm Institute Chair Professorship and is Dean (Planning). During the period
April 2008 – December 2009, he served as the Co-Chair of the IITM special Task Force for
setting up the new IIT at Hyderabad. David also served as Head, Central Electronics Centre
of IITM during 20010-11. David’s technical areas of expertise include cellular and broadband
wireless systems, and DSP techniques for wireless communications. He is the Faculty
Coordinator of the IITMSAT Student Satellite initiative. During Jan – July 2007, David was on
sabbatical from IITM and served as the Chief Scientist, Centre of Excellence in Wireless
Technology (CEWiT), a public-private R&D initiative of the Govt. of India, and was
responsible for launching the national project – Broadband Wireless Consortium of India
(BWCI). Prior to joining IITM, David was at Ericsson USA for twelve years, where he held
different technical and managerial positions. In 2000, he became the Director of the
Ericsson’s Advanced Technologies and Research Department at RTP, North Carolina. In this
role, he was responsible for an R&D team of 75 engineers developing GPRS/EDGE handset
technology. At IITM, David has established an active research and teaching program in
wireless communications and DSP.Honours / Awards
 Qualcomm Institute Chair Professorship (March 2016)
 Awarded 32 US patents, 10 Canadian Patents and 19 WIPO/European patents
 Over 70 journal and conference publications
 1999 –“Ericsson Inventor of the Year” award, the highest technical recognition within
Ericsson
 Nov 2003 - Elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
 2014 - Srimathi Marti Annapurna Gurunath Award for Excellence in Teaching (Best
Teacher Award of IIT Madras)

Topic-"My Experiences in the Indian Army – In the Service of the Nation"

About the speaker-

Major General(retd) VN Prasad is a senior army veteran with corporate experience at top management level. He is also an exceptional mentor. He was a fellow at the Daniel K..Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in 2005. He served as the General Officer Commanding at the Sino Indian border from 2011 to 2012. He currently heads the L&T Manufacturing Complex at Hazira and is also the Vice President, Central Management Committee, L&T Ltd, Coimbatore. He is also associated with ‘Project Shine’ and ‘Single Teacher School’ Project, sponsored by L&T.

Dr Anil Prakash Joshi is an Indian green activist, social worker, botanist and the founder of Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization(HESCO), a Dehradun-based non-governmental organization involved in the development of environmentally sustainable technologies for the agricultural sector.He is a recipient of the Jamnalal Bajaj Award and is an Ashoka Fellow.The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2006, for his contributions to Indian society.

Talk by V.Seena Department of Avionics, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Department of Space, Government of India, Valiamala, Thiruvananthapuram, India – 695547
E-mail: seena.v@iist.ac.in

AbstractThe evolution of today’s miniature sensor systems happened due to the revolutions in theMicrosystems (MEMS) and nanoelectronics technologies. Silicon and derived materials have beenconsidered to be the primary materials in nanoelectronics and hence in MEMS. However, over the lastdecade, many classes of microsystems have been demonstrated using other potential materials likepolymers and ceramics for reducing the cost of fabrication with inherent benefit of improved sensorperformance. Talk would focus on the development of ultra-sensitive MEMS platforms withnovel electromechanical techniques for integrated transduction as well as for CMOS-MEMSintegration. The miniature microsystems have been demonstrated to have huge potential forthe development of various engineering and scientific applications ranging from low costmicro sensors in the field of environmental monitoring, health care, homeland security, gassensors for space and terrestrial applications to inertial systems such as MEMSAccelerometers.

Mr Santhanam worked as Senior R&D Chemist in Sika Corporation, USA from May 1996 to Nov 1998. His job involved preparation of formulations for chemical admixtures for concrete, laboratory and field evaluations, assistance in production and quality control, and product implementation.

He was the instructor in Purdue University, USA, May – Aug 2001 (Teaching of a summer term course). He was Assistant Professor in IIT Madras from Oct 2001 to Mar 2009 and was Teaching, research, and industrial consultancy. Currently, he is Professor and placement advisor at IIT Madras.

He is a Life member of Indian Concrete Institute, Member of American Concrete Institute and Member of RILEM.

He has received prestigious awards like W.L. Dolch Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in Civil Engineering Materials, Purdue University, May 2001, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Young Scientist Grant, 2003 – 2006, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Career Award for Young Teachers, 2006 – 2009, Indian Concrete Institute – Prof. V. Ramakrishnan Award for Outstanding Young Researcher in Concrete Technology, 2006 and Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) Young Engineer Award 2008.

Link to his youtube video rumble.71 is below-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0-yXixTX10

Mr Santhanam worked as Senior R&D Chemist in Sika Corporation, USA from May 1996 to Nov 1998. His job involved preparation of formulations for chemical admixtures for concrete, laboratory and field evaluations, assistance in production and quality control, and product implementation.

He was the instructor in Purdue University, USA, May – Aug 2001 (Teaching of a summer term course). He was Assistant Professor in IIT Madras from Oct 2001 to Mar 2009 and was Teaching, research, and industrial consultancy. Currently, he is Professor and placement advisor at IIT Madras.

He is a Life member of Indian Concrete Institute, Member of American Concrete Institute and Member of RILEM.

He has received prestigious awards like W.L. Dolch Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in Civil Engineering Materials, Purdue University, May 2001, Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Young Scientist Grant, 2003 – 2006, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Career Award for Young Teachers, 2006 – 2009, Indian Concrete Institute – Prof. V. Ramakrishnan Award for Outstanding Young Researcher in Concrete Technology, 2006 and Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) Young Engineer Award 2008.

Rajakrishnan Rajkumar ’s research interests lie at the intersection of language technology and science inquiries about language production and comprehension. After completing a PhD in computational linguistics from The Ohio State University, he now teaches linguistics at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India. Before that, he completed an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum and subsequently switched to linguistics at the masters level at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). His recent research has looked at modelling choice in the grammar of languages using computational models and techniques. He has also conducted eye-tracking experiments to study comprehension of synthetic speech.

A session on "Awareness of Cancer" will be conducted on Wednesday, 27 September, 4:30 to 5:30pm by Ahalya Women and Children's hospital. The focus of the talk will be on awareness about cancers which occur more among women. They might also touch upon rubella vaccination.

The intended audience will be the women community of IIT Palakkad consisting of students, staff, faculty and their family members. However, anyone interested to know about the topic is welcome.

Abstract. In this talk, Dr. Piyush will explain the theory of quantum codes, in particular the theory of stabiliser codes, starting from the theory of classical error correcting codes. The goal of the talk is to show the following: Construction of an $n$-length quantum stabilizer code is essentially the same as constructing a classical linear code of length $2n$ over a finite field $F_p$, but for a "minor" technical requirement of isotropy. What this means in practice is that one can study quantum codes purely as a combinatorial object with no mention of Hilbert spaces, measurements or the life of half-dead cats. For folks who *do* care about feline lives, he will also explain how the isotropy condition arise in this context (Hint: It has to do with certain commutation relation of operators over a Hilbert space).

No background on error correcting codes, whether quantum or classical will be assumed.

Touchstone Foundation, an ISKCON Bangalore initiative is a registered non-profit organization comprising of various corporate employees. As Akshaya Patra, an ISKCON Bangalore initiative is satisfying the hungry stomachs of 1.5 million children across the country; Touchstone Foundation has been formed to satisfy the hungry intellect of thousands of youth using the principles of timeless Vedic wisdom.

About the Workshop-

The newfound freedom of an urban lifestyle and the demanding pressure exerted for constant performance takes the toll on the young minds of late. Having observed this trend, Touchstone Foundation has come up with various specially designed interactive workshop for the students. Once such program is “ARTOFMINDCONTROL” where the students get to learn the techniques of how to handle tough circumstances in their life. The workshop may help in managing stress. There is no fee for workshop. You all are invited to attend. The investment is only your precious time and the return on investment is enormous.

About SPIC MACAY (Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth):
SPIC MACAY is a non-political nationwide voluntary movement that organizes programmes of classical music and dance, folk arts, crafts, yoga, classic cinema screenings, heritage walks, etc. inside school and college campuses throughout the world to make students more aware about the Indian and world heritage. For more details, see http://spicmacay.com/

AboutBhartanatyam: Bharatanatyam is an Indian classical dance form and presumably the oldest classical dance heritage of India. The name of the dance form was derived by joining two words, ‘Bharata’ and Natyam’ where ‘Natyam in Sanskrit means dance and ‘Bharata’ is a mnemonic comprising ‘bha’, ‘ra’ and ‘ta’ which respectively means ‘bhava’ that is emotion and feelings; ‘raga’ that is melody; and ‘tala’ that is rhythm. Thus, traditionally the word refers to a dance form where bhava, raga and tala are expressed.

About the Artist: Narthaki Nataraj is a disciple of Tanjore Shri K P Kittappa Pillai, who is a direct descendant of the Tanjore Quartet Brothers (considered as fathers of Bharatnatyam). She learnt and practised under him in Gurukul for 14 years and specialized in Tanjore style Nayaki Bhava tradition. She has received the SNA Puraskar Award from The President of India and a Senior Fellowship from Dept. of Culture, Govt. Of India. She has performed at all leading festivals in India, USA, UK and Europe.

Prof. Srinvasa Moorthy from IIT Delhi is going to give a lecture session for first year B.Tech students (any one can attend).

Title: EVOLUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Abstract:

Electrical Engineering is one of the oldest disciplines evolved over a
century. Lecture narrates its history by highlighting critical milestones. IEEE
named the last century as electric century. At the initial stage generation,
transmission, distribution and utilization was pursues based on fundamental
concepts of Faraday Edison, Ampere etc. Fight between ac and dc was intense led
by Edison and Tesla. Later electron devices spurred the ever expanding area of
Electronics. Marconi pioneered communication revolution. Babbage’s computer
concept today has heralded digital revolution. Renewable Energy and Efficiency
have come to center stage due to climate change effects. Electric vehicles and
driver less cars are becoming reality.

About the speaker: Dr. Heinrich Voges, studied physics at the University of Goettingen and got his PhD in physical chemistry (laser spectroscopy) from the Max-Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry. In 1989, he founded the company LaVision together with Prof. Peter Andersen. From 1988-91 he worked at the Laser Laboratory Goettingen (LLG) and was leading the research group, Applied Combustion Diagnostics. In 1991 he joined LaVision first as a Technical Director and since 1997 as a member of the management team. He has pver thirty years experience in the field of laser imaging and absorption measurement techniques

Abstract: Polynomial rings over Noetherian commutative rings have
applications in several areas like cryptography, control theory,
coding theory and algebraic geometry. For example, in lattice based
cryptography, most arithmetic operations are over integers, and in
control theory parametric equations with polynomials themselves as
coefficients are very common. Algorithmic techniques for polynomial
rings over fields are well studied with Groebner bases being one of
the fundamental tools in computational ideal theory. Even though
various approaches have been proposed to extend Groebner bases theory
to polynomial rings over rings, these techniques have only looked at
extending basic definitions and concepts.

In this talk, She will present an algorithmic characterization that
allows us to extend certain fundamental results in the theory of
Groebner bases like the Macaulay-Buchberger basis theorem to
polynomial rings over rings. I will also present an algorithmic
method to compute the Krull dimension of residue class rings of
polynomial rings. Finally, I will show how these techniques can be
used to extend the notion of ideal lattices to the multivariate case,
an important class of lattices that have several applications in
lattice based cryptography. I will also show how to build collision
resistant hash functions using these ideal lattices. This is a joint
work with Prof. Ambedkar Dukkipati and ongoing work with Prof. Manuel

Abstract:
This talk will provide some light-hearted view points on career choices out there after graduation. It will discuss entrepreneurship and share perspectives on how entrepreneurs should go about building their dreams and aspirations into a successful company. Along the way, the talk will share common pitfalls faced by startups and how to
overcome them. The four strategic pillars that hold the key to startup success will be shared. The talk will also touch upon how investors perceive startups and what they look for before funding a startup. For those students interested in an industry internship, the discussion will center around the process of internship itself and the maturity and professionalism required to work as an intern.

About the speaker:

G Venkat is a serial entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and author who is a true technology enthusiast. He launched an AI-driven eLearning company called bitWise Academy with a vision to bring applied computer science education to every student in the world by leveraging cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence. Venkat’s recent book on automating application modernization in enterprises was published by McGraw-Hill with the foreword written by Thomas Kurian, President, Oracle. His areas of focus include AI & machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), distributed computing, big data & analytics, cloud and mobility. Venkat serves as an advisor to multiple startups. He holds a B.Tech. degree in Aerospace Engineering from The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-M), Madras, India, MS and Ph.D. (ABD) in Interdisciplinary Studies (Computer Science and Aerospace) from The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Topic: Actuator Selection and Placement for Linear Feedback Control of Compressible Flows

Actuator selection and placement for active flow control is largely based on experience and trial-and-error because of the system’s large dimensionality and complexity. We develop a novel method for estimating how to select and place a linear feedback control system suitable for affecting the dynamics of compressible, viscous flows, that utilizes the information contained within the global stability analysis of the baseflow (a time-averaged solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations), obtained from direct numerical/large eddy simulations. A wavemaker, defined by a suitable inner product of the forward and adjoint global modes of the baseflow, identifies regions of the flow-field with high dynamical sensitivity, and an optimization procedure determines effective actuator locations. The algorithm is flexible, and different types of control and feedback can be developed to obtain flow control. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated with two different flow control problems - flow stabilization in a Mach 0.65 diffuser, and the control of noise radiated by a turbulent Mach 0.9 jet.

About the speaker:

Mahesh Natarajan is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calicut in 2007, and Master's in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2009. He completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. His research interests lie in the field of numerical methods, computational fluid dynamics and scientific computing.

Title: An ​Au-some cosmic explosion and its implication for 21st century Astronomy

Abstract:
On 16 October 2017, LIGO Virgo Scientific Collaboration announced their first detection of gravitational waves from a merging neutron star binary.
this event GW170817, discovered on 18 August 2017, was localized to an incredible 28 square degree on the sky and was essentially coincident
with short gamma ray burst, GRB 170817A, observed by Fermi & INTEGRAL. The unprecedented localization of our GW event and its associated
GRB detection triggered a world-wide electro-magnetic follow up observations, involving around 70 ground and space based observatories.
This event marks the beginning of multi-messenger GW Astronomy while giving glimpses of its true potential. These observations are allowing
us to probe many different aspects of astrophysics including the association of short hard gamma ray bust with merging
neutron stars, EOS of neutron stars, testing general relativity, estimating the Hubble constant using gravitational waves and
processes that created heavy elements like Gold and Platinum in the Universe. The talk will focus on some of the impressive implications of
GW170817/GRB170817A​ after giving an elementary introduction to gravitational waves and LIGO/VIRGO instruments

About SPIC MACAY (Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth): SPIC MACAY is a non-political nationwide voluntary movement that organizes programmes of classical music and dance, folk arts, crafts, yoga, classic cinema screenings, heritage walks, etc. inside school and college campuses throughout the world to make students more aware about the Indian and world heritage. For more details, see http://spicmacay.com/

About the Artist: Pandit Shubhendra Rao is a composer and sitar player who is ranked amongst the top soloists of India. He stayed with his guru Pandit Ravi Shankar in the Guru-Shishya Parampara for over 10 years. Shubhendra Rao has performed at major music festivals and concert halls like Broadway and Carnegie Hall in New York, WOMAD festival in Guernsey, UK, Sydney Opera House in Australia, National Arts Festival in South Africa, Theatre de le Ville in Paris, Edinburgh festival and Doverlane Music Conference in India.

Abstract: Conventional unsupervised data analytics techniques have largely focused on processing datasets of single-type data, e.g., one of text, ECG, Sensor Readings and Image data. With increasing digitization, it has become common to have data objects having representations that encompass different "kinds" of information. For example, the same disease condition may be identified through EEG or fMRI data. Thus, a dataset of EEG-fMRI pairs would be considered as a parallel two-view dataset. Datasets of text-image pairs (e.g., a description of a seashore, and an image of it) and text-text pairs (e.g., problem-solution text, or multi-language text from machine translation scenarios) are other common instances of multi-view data. The challenge in multi-view data analytics is about effectively leveraging such parallel multi-view data to perform analytics tasks such as clustering, retrieval and anomaly detection. This talk will cover some emerging trends in processing multi-view parallel data with a focus on exploratory data analytics over them. In addition to providing a high-level view of the area, this talk will cover two recent research publications authored by the speaker, one on multi-view clustering, and another on multi-view dimensionality reduction.

About the Speaker

Dr. Deepak Padmanabhan holds a faculty position in Computer Science at Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom. He received his B.Tech from Cochin University and his M.Tech and PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, all in Computer Science. His current research interests include data analytics, similarity search, information retrieval and natural language processing. Deepak has published over 40 research papers across major venues in Information and Knowledge Management. His work has led to seven patents from the USPTO. Recently, he authored a book titled "Operators for Similarity Search" which was published by Springer in 2015. A Senior Member of the IEEE and the ACM, he is also the recipient of the INAE Young Engineer Award 2015, an award recognizing scientific work by researchers across engineering disciplines in India. He may be reached at deepaksp@acm.org.